


The Girl Who Never Smiled

by madasthesea



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale inspired, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:31:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasthesea/pseuds/madasthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sits in her fortress of books in the corner of the library and watches the seasons pass. Inspired by the Russian fairy tale "The Princess Who Never Smiled"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Never Smiled

 

She sighed and watched the physicist storm away. She’d been rather hopeful about that one. Two PhD’s and a favorite of the teachers. And yet…

She turned her attention back to watching the leaves fall outside the window.

It was quite the sight, seeing her sitting encircled by walls and parapets in the shape of books, her own discontent guarding her kingdom better than knights with glittering armor and blood rusted swords. Those who approached her, seeking—seeking what? Did they even know? –they thought her the princess. None of them have yet realized that she was not. That she did not even know if she was the king or the prisoner.

 

 

There was a corner of the library she’d claimed as her own on the third day of her first year. It was in the aviation and aeronautics section, which held no interest to her apart from the leather armchair, large window, and childish longing for the impossibility of flight.

By the third week of school, she’d realized that someone else had found the same sanctuary in her view of the maple covered hill. Their schedules never conflicted, but there were notes left there sometimes, always in the same sprawling handwriting that made her think of handwritten books and heavy tapestries in drafty stone corridors.

She poured over the blueprint that had been left the day before and for some strange reason felt like crying.

 

 

_If you would get off your high horse_ , someone had said to her one day, _you might be able to find some friends._

She did not know how to tell them that it wasn’t a mount made from egotism and pride that kept her from companionship. It was a tower with iron bars at the window and one hundred and seventeen stairs—that’s what the math said at least; she’d never been able to count them herself—with a trick one five up from the bottom. She’d tried to pick the lock on the door, but it never clicked open. She could have tried harder, probably. But what she’d managed to see out the window had not seemed worth the effort.

If they wanted her, they could come find her. She wasn’t going anywhere. The books here were limitless and the view of the snow covered maple tree was perfect.

 

 

She spent the first ten minutes of her study time staring at the third shelf down of the second shelf over where a new book had appeared. It was not in the right section, but she had the feeling it had been placed in that spot, squeezed between two overly large almanacs on airplane models, for a very specific reason. She approached with the wariness of one who’d been poisoned before and knew that there was no easy cure.

It was the size of her hand and she held it with reverence as she flipped it open to reveal the clumsily folded paper tucked inside its yellow pages.

_Thank you for returning my designs_ , it said in that familiar, scribbled hand. _Most people wouldn’t have._

She checks out the book the note had been residing in, though it’s not her usual reading material—engineering was interesting, but not like a living, growing thing. She replaces it with a different tome, on biological warfare, with a different paper and a note written in clear, precise handwriting.

_You’re welcome._ And because that doesn’t feel like enough, she adds, _You should be more careful with them._

Her hands tremble when she slides the book into place on the shelf.

 

 

The buds on the tree were barely opening and she did not jump when someone cleared their throat behind her because she wanted to be childish for a moment and pretend that the new flowers are signifying change in her, not just the seasons.

They cleared their throat again and she turned her head slowly to look at them. She did not acknowledge how they hesitated to speak. She did not blame them.

It was a young man, with depthless eyes and the look of someone too harried to watch a lightning storm. She did not smile back when he did. When he asked what she knew he was going to ask, the ‘yes’ stuck in her throat like honey toffee, cloyingly sweet and choking her with its insistence that she acknowledge it. It came out as a rejection instead.

He didn't storm away, but people stared at her, left in his raging wake wide eyed and grief filled. They flinched away when they met her eyes. She turned back to the window.

 

 

_Look under the chair_.

It had been left for her, along with an analysis of the book she’d left, inside another thick work about the benefits of various metals when welding. She had squinted at his choice of book, the note, and then the chair. Then she walked over, got on her hands and knees and looked under the chair.

It is a blueprint with a note scribbled on the bottom in marker. _It keeps overheating. Help?_

She spends her entire study time fixing the design. She leaves it under the chair again, writes back, and walks out of the library without even pulling her books from her bag.

Her eyes are bright and she has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She takes the long way home.

 

 

She sat perfectly straight in the leather armchair, piles of books on either side of her, and ignored the mutterings. People could only take so much apathy before they grew angry. They did not understand that she had never known a role that did not require apathy. She was not unused to people watching her.

She was not unused to disappointment.

She was, however, entirely unaccustomed to the way her heart had dropped when the two almanacs that had been kept apart for the past months were again reunited. Her unknown communicator had not replied to her problem solving and she thought, for several moments, that she would very much like to go home and not come out again for a very long time.

Panting breaths reached her ears and she turned woodenly to see who had decided that they would infiltrate her sanctuary, her tower with the doors bolted from the inside and the drawbridge lifted high.

It was a young man, curls spilling over his brow, hands on his knees as he panted. His face was red and it made her think of someone who had just run up a very long set of stairs.

She kept her face impassive, though the corners of her mouth twitched as she watched him regain his composure.

“They moved the book,” was the first thing he said. And she thought that sentence might be more wonderful than the maple tree in full bloom behind her.

“What?” She croaked, and scolded herself for the way his face fell for a second.

“You’re the one who fixed my design, right? The one I’ve been writing to?”

She nodded and very much wanted to stand, but thought she might have lost the ability to.

“They moved the book I left for you. And I’d written out this big long note and everything. Hope no one finds it, that’d be embarrassing,” he said, the words spilling from him like he couldn’t stop them. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“But basically what I said in it was that I’ve shown that design to five professors and not one of them has been able to fix the overheating, and you did. And I really think that we’d be mad if we didn’t become-“

“Partners,” she finished. He smiled at her.

She smiled back.


End file.
